What software are you using??

Hello,

Can anyone share there experiences on scheduling and keeping track of there customers? I us quickbooks pro 2012 now but no
scheduling. Have 7 guys in field every day hard to keep up with.

Thank you,

Treecare
 
Google calander for scheduling. It is free and your foreman, office manager, estimator and whoever you want can view it anytime anywhere. Your estimator and office can be given access and the ability to update and change the schedule. They can have all their appointments there as well in there own color. It interacts with androids very well and tells you when and where you have to be an hour before your scheduled appointment. It's awesome.
 
We use Routzy http://www.routzy.com for estimating and everyone has an iphone and/or iPad so we use a shared calendar so everyone can see what jobs are coming up and details about staffing, trucks, and misc equipment needed for the jobs all on each calendar event listing.

Our accounting software is web-based Wave Accounting http://goo.gl/DfhST and it is 100% free and works pretty good. Not SUPER happy with it, but it'll do.

Routzy is $25/month and can only be done on an iPad. The calendar is free.

I am surprised I can't find a single program that will do scheduling, estimating, and billing/invoicing. This is something that EVERY contractor needs. There has to be something WAY better than what I am doing.

I'm considering Zoho as replacement for all of them, but can't quite figure out how it all works, but supposedly it can do all the above needed functions for not much money.

For a little company like me, ArborGold makes no sense at all. It just makes lots of dollars...for ArborGold. :(

love
nick
 
ArborGold for us has gone from bad to worse. We NEED to get something that works all the time and covers the multiple things as you point out. I'm in the process of (hopefully) getting a solution. Nick- thanks for the couple of possible options.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Dooley- can you give me any more info on Real Green? We've used ArborGold for something like 8 years and we're lookin' for a change.

[/ QUOTE ]

It does so much you should go to youtube and watch there info. We had Arbor gold before. Now we use real green ..
 
I was planning on switching from AG to something better last spring but never found something appropriate for my needs. I'll be doing a review in January and switching to something for sure since AG just won't be meeting my needs with multiple users. That and AG is falling behind on software development and customer service.

I looked into Salesforce and it looked promising. The scheduler may not work so well for me though. The price tag was steep, i'd have to have pretty much all mu staff with licenses on their smartphones and that was going to be about $250/month. Also i'm still not sold on the speed, efficiency and safety of having all of your data in the cloud.

I would like to ditch laptops altogether and stick to just tablets but that still seems like a couple of years away.

v
 
I'll try to be brief because I could write a novel at this point.
We started losing unscheduled work from the list (on the scheduler). But, they were still in work order status when you would look in the customer page. That's enough to make any biz owner freak. AG said it was something that would be fixed in an update. So, when we did the update (because they said it would fix it) we lost all our custom reports, all of our custom forms, and the inventory quit working. They managed to fix everything but the inventory. the solution to the scheduler issue was to not use the "new" scheduler. This went on for the entire season, which is a huge pain in the to do weekly inventory by hand or with a spreadsheet because of the time involved in conversion of measurements. We called, emailed and called again, still no fix. Donna said John would fix it. We called, emailed and called again, still no fix. Then last month I told Donna that I would send them a check for the service plan as soon as the inventory worked...
Haven't heard from them since then!
I compare this to: I send a crew to do a job, tough tree but, my forman and I talk and he says he can do it. He tries but is worried/uncomfortable with the rigging 1/2 way thru and calls for back up. So, we just leave town and the customer has to get someone else to finish right? Nope thats the AG way! I get my out there and get the frickin' job done. Ya it costs me more, maybe even lose money but, that's the right thing to do. Stand by your word and do what you said you would!
 
Ryan,

Wow, thanks for the info. That definately changes my opinion on AG. We haven't updated ours for a while and maybe thats why I haven't had those problems. I will be looking to change now that I know AG is going in that direction.
 
Wade,

I watched the Real Green video and it does seem awesome for lawn care, but how is it on the tree care end? Does it have similar options like ArborGold?
 
I'm surprised that for such an expensive program, ArborGold doesn't have some sort of trial thing you can check out on the iPad. They have an app. I installed it, but it starts off by asking you to log in. Maybe they don't want us to experience what Reed had to deal with!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone tried Salesforce?

[/ QUOTE ]

I used it extensively at a company I used to work for. I played a major role in the setup and user features. It worked like a charm there. But it was mostly just a database.

I implemented it for my splicing business. I used it whole heartedly for 2 years, then dropped it. It's great at setting reminders and keeping contact with all your clients. But no one at the company could show me how to incorporate the info into making good estimates and invoices.

Though it seems to be infinitely customizable, I still couldn't get it to be what I wanted it to be. When I started my arb company full time, I looked into it again by asking the sales team of salesforce if they had made any advancements that would allow me to do scheduling, proposals, invoicing, etc. They said no, so I went elsewhere.

Still using Routzy, though I'm not completely sold on it. There's got to be a better option out there.

Honestly, we need to all pitch in and pay someone to create a perfect program. We're all looking for the exact same thing and we're assuming its out there and we're wasting our time downloading trials of programs and wasting our money buying programs only to drop them a few months later because they just don't work for us.

Maybe if there isn't a better way, we have to create it.

love
nick
 

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